Mitch Marner and Frederik Andersen are about to meet on hockey’s biggest stage, and this time there is no Toronto locker room between them. Marner’s Vegas Golden Knights will face Andersen’s Carolina Hurricanes in Game 1 of the 2026 Stanley Cup Final on Tuesday at 8 p.m. ET at Lenovo Center.
The matchup turns a former teammate into the man trying to stop him. Marner enters the Final leading the NHL this postseason with 21 points in 16 games, including seven goals and 14 assists, while also sitting plus-12, best on Vegas. Andersen has answered every shot in Carolina’s run, playing every minute on the way to the Final and going 12-1 with a 1.41 goals-against average and a.931 save percentage.
The two were joined at the hip in Toronto from 2016 to 2021, when Andersen was one of Marner’s first mentors after the winger came into the NHL with the Maple Leafs. Marner said Andersen opened his door early, inviting him over and out to dinners, then taking him out to eat after games so they could talk hockey. “He was just one of the guys who brought me in and made me feel really comfortable since Day 1,” Marner said.
Andersen remembered the same stretch as more than a job. He said the two faced each other in practice every day during their five seasons together, and that the time away from the ice and in the locker room was “really, really fun.” During the 2020 All-Star Game in St. Louis, Andersen even unveiled a custom-made mask with Marner and Auston Matthews on the sides, a small sign of how close the group had become.
That friendship now sits inside a Final shaped by unfinished business. The Maple Leafs did not win a single playoff series while Marner and Andersen were teammates, and Andersen left in 2021 as a free agent for Carolina. Both arrive in this series carrying their own playoff form, and both still have the same prize in front of them: a first Stanley Cup. Andersen said he and Marner have stayed in contact since going their separate ways, and he said it has been good to watch Marner grow up, including into a family man with a son.
The story line is simple, even if the stakes are not. One former Maple Leafs mentor is trying to win his first title by stopping the player he once helped settle into the league. Game 1 will show whether that old comfort still matters when the puck drops and the championship chase becomes real.
